WHO WE ARE

Our beat is the labor front, broadly defined, both geographically and conceptually. We examine the world of work and workers on the job as well as where they live. We examine the issues that affect their everyday lives, with a particular sensitivity towards human rights abuses, environmental concerns and the U.S. drive for global domination. We record their global struggles and provide analysis of their efforts to empower themselves and transform society to provide greater democratic, human, social, political and economic rights. Each program consists of feature stories, generally interviews, within a historical context, often accompanied by sound from demonstrations, rallies or conferences, and complemented and enhanced by poetry and instrumental or vocal -- people's culture.

Over the years Building Bridges has produced a weekly one hour program, Mondays from 7-8 PM EST, covering local, national and international labor and community issues over radio WBAI-Pacifica 99.5 FM in New York.We also produce half hour version, Building Bridges National, which is distribtued to over 40 broadcast and internet radio stations.

For more information you can contact us at knash@igc.org
In Struggle
Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash

The Homecoming Tribute for The Action Figure, The Instrumentalist of Words, The Writer, The Master Teacher Amiri BarakaThe Homecoming tribute of writer and revolutionary icon Amiri Baraka shut down a section of one of downtown Newark’s main streets, dignitary style. African drummers flanked the entry to Newark Symphony Hall, greeting each attendee with ancestral rhythms and setting the tone for what would be a service filled with music, poetry, remembrance and fire; the fire you light when a world-changing, shape-shifting native son has left us. Inside, every seat was taken by those who came from around the corner and around the world for Amiri Baraka, beat poet, Black Nationalist, Marxist, Griot, Shaman, Lighter of Fires; a man whose intellectual and spiritual breadth was reflected in his perpetual search for his truest place in the world and to free others to realize theirs. Poet Saul Williams intoned “This is a stick up. Amiri get out of the coffin”– and with that he conjured up Amiri Baraka’s spirit and lifted ours as did Woody King Jr. and Danny Glover, Asha Bandele, Michael Eric Dyson, Jessica Care Moore and Tony Medina. And Sonia Sanchez was there with an offering from Maya Angelou. And Sister Souljah was there. And Haki Madhubuti was there. And Cornel West was there. And Larry Hamm was there. Oliver Lake, Kevin Maynard and Avery Brooks were there. And Glynn Turman was there. And Ras Baraka was there; the son. The chosen son, the next Mayor of Newark, rhapsodizing, channeling the spirit of his father in an epoch offering - Amiri announcing from the grave the power of a father to shape his son into a reflection of himself and into his own man. This was a revelatory moment for those present at the tribute for Amiri Baraka, The Action Figure, The Instrumentalist of Words, The Writer, The Master Teacher who was forever seared on my cerebellum and soloing in my nervous system. The entire experience was evidence of our collective genius. The People were there…because they could not imagine not being there” and now you’ll be there to. We’ll take you there and you’ll be imbued with the passion of the beloved community, socially engaged people working for empowerment. And amongst the brilliant tributes and encouraging instruction for activism to continue, we’ll weave the poetry, the speeches of Amiri Baraka beckoning us to fan the embers and reignite the struggle for justice.Play stream

Working for an Economy, By the People, for the PeoplewithProfessor Stanley AronowitzStanley Aronowitz is the director of the Center for the Study of Culture,Technology and Work at the CUNY Graduate Center, a distinguishedprofessor of sociology and urban education, author of 23 books , andran for governor of New York in 2002. He is one of the great publicintellectuals of our times. Author of 23 books, he’s known around theworld for writing classics like False Promises: The Shaping ofAmerican Working Class Consciousness, 40 years ago, and TheCrisis in Historical Materialism nearly 30 years ago. His more recentbooks such as The Jobless Future, How Class Works, ImplicatingEmpire, The Politics of Identity: Class, Culture and Social Movements,and upcoming The Death and Rebirth of American Labor: Toward aNew Labor Movement define the philosophic road to travel and offer afoundation for our thinking about the solution to our economic quagmire,our growing wealth inequality and deepening poverty.

In Response to Responses to the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
withRiham Barghouti, Palestinian
American, who worked lived in Palestine for 10 years and worked at Birzeit
University, founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel and Adalah-NYand Andrew Ross,
Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, N.Y.U. Member, American Studies
Association

NYS Senate co-leader Jeffrey
Klein (D-Bronx) and Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) introduced a bill
that would give colleges and universities in New York 30 days to withdraw
their support from groups like the American Studies Association, which
recently voted for such an academic boycott, or NYS lawmakers Senate
co-leader Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) and Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn)
want to strip aid from universities whose faculty participate in academic
organizations that urge a boycott against Israel. The bill passed the Senate
but is stalled in the Assembly. This is in response to the American Studies
Association (ASA), which recently voted for such an academic boycott. Cornell, New
York University, Columbia, SUNY Buffalo and SUNY Stony Brook are among the institutions with faculty affiliated with the ASA, made up of 5,000 professors. The ASA over-whelmingly voted to refuse to enter into formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, or with scholars who are expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions , or on behalf of the Israeli government, until Israel ceases
to violate international law. and human rights. We’ll discuss the
growing efficacy of the boycotts, divestiture and sanctions movement.play streamdownload

Could This Be the Year in NYS for a Single-Payer Health Care System?withAssemblyman Richard Gottfried,Chair NYS Assembly Health CommitteeandDr. Mary O'Brien, Board Member,Physicians for a National Health Program, primary care physician at Columbia University who also participates in the medical economics section of the clinical practice course for 4th-year medical students.Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, is rolling out his bill establishing a statewide single-payer health care system, a structure often shorthanded by advocates nationwide as “Medicare for All.” Even though the nation is only beginning to implement the federal Affordable Health Care Act, Gottfried said the Empire State shouldn’t have to wait years before seeing where it falls short. “Federal health care reform has done a lot of good, but it still leaves us in the hands of insurance companies.,” “It would save the billions of dollars that we now spend on insurance company administrative costs. … You and your doctor would work to keep you healthy. New York Health would pay the bill with funding from broad-based revenue based on ability to pay,” Gottfried said and “New York can do better.”PlusSen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Jim McDermott discuss the state by state approach to enacting Medicare for all single payer health insurance plan as pioneered by Vermont which could become the model for the nation.streamdownload

PRESENTE: In Conversation & Song with Pete Seeger No, death cannot silence our beloved
Pete Seeger. His rhythms and tunes will find their way beyond time and
across borders to wherever people toil and yearn to build a way for
humankind against greed and hate. His songs will forever inspire a chorus
and when sung by enough people the choir can tear down walls, overthrow
tyrants and, break the chains of serfdom. Not overnight in a crescendo, but
little by little. Pete Seeger knew a song could not stop a bullet, could
not stop a truncheon, but he believed that from little things, big things
grow. He was a messenger of a power invisible and indivisible. As he once
wrote: ''Songs won't save the planet, but then neither will books or
speeches. Songs are sneaky things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate
in prisons.Penetrate hard shells.'' Pete Seeger never tired and indeed was
inspired and energized to make the world a better place through his music
and activism. His lifelong commitment to the cause of peace and to
addressing the plight of the downtrodden has been an inspiration to all
those who have championed society's victims and have done what they could to
combat injustice.

A Building Bridges Expose - How the U.S. Government Profits from Child Labor, Forced Overtime, Wage Violations, and Other Illegal, Dangerous and Inhumane Conditionswith Ian Urbina, N.Y. Times investigatory reporterandMolly McGrath, International Campaigns Coordinator, AFL-CIO

Just as major brands and retailers buy from thousands of global suppliers who fail to comply with laws, protect workers and respect workers' rights, the federal government’s system for purchasing goods and services has failed to ensure that workers who produce these goods in global supply chains do so free from danger and exploitation. From its workers’ uniforms, to clothes using the logo of its armed forces, to goods sold at large stores on military bases, the U.S. government is the buyer, brand owner or retailer of more than 1 billion dollars of clothes. Yet it pays virtually no attention to the conditions in the many thousands of workplaces around the world (including the U.S.) where the goods are made Play streamDownload

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BUILDING BRIDGES BASICS

Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report is broadcast weekly in the N.Y.C. to the Metropolitan area over WBAI, Pacifica on Mondays from 7-8 PM EST. Building Bridges and most WBAI Programs are now being archived for 90 Days. They are also being PodCast. These links will be live ca. 15 minutes after the program ends. To listen, download or PodCast archived shows go to http://archive.wbai.org/allshows.php?sort=nameaz

We also produce half hour version, Building Bridges National, Edition which is distributed to over 40 broadcast and internet radio stations.

Minding Business, a semi-monthly on-line publication of the Preamble Collaborative. Minding Business covers grassroots progressive activism and major federal, state, and local legislative initiatives directed toward increasing employment and countering the anti-worker, anti-consumer and anti-environmental shenanigans of corporations and their friends in political office. Each issue also contains economic news and editorials by Preamble staff and guest writers.

National Interfaith Committee For Worker Justice- people of faith who educate, organize, and mobilize the religious community in the U.S. on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for workers, especially low-wage workers.